to reach the village of brean and to come in touch again with the coast on leaving weston-super-mare, uphill village is passed, with a choice of roads then presenting itself: a short road with a penny toll to pay, or a slightly longer one, free. either one of these brings you down into the flat lands under the scarred and quarried sides of bleadon hill, some 550 feet high. the handsome perpendicular tower of bleadon church groups beautifully with a fine fifteenth-century village cross.
thenceforward, across the flats, now rich meadows, through lanes with much fine hedgerow timber, the way leads to lympsham, a village rebuilt by the local squire, who happened to be also the parson, over half a century ago. every cottage is in a more or less domestic gothic style, as gothic was then understood, strongly flavoured with ecclesiasticism. the manor-house itself is gothic, something after the strawberry hill manner of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century date, and really deplorable, were it not that the beautiful and well-wooded grounds, and the 99magnolias that clothe the walls, soften the effect. the church of st. christopher, immediately opposite, and encircled by beautiful elms and oaks, has a fine tower that noticeably leans to the west.
bleadon church.
from lympsham the road turns abruptly to the coast at brean, winding and turning 100unweariedly this way and that, over the open marshes; with deep dykes, half-filled with water and mud, on either side, and willows of every age, from saplings like walking-sticks to reverend ancients, hollow and riven with age, lining them.
thus shall we come at length to brean, as into the end of all things; for, truly, the spot is desolate. not, let it be said, with an ugly desolation; for, although as you approach the sea, and the good alluvial earth becomes more and more admixed with sand, the surroundings become mere waste land, these are wastes with their own charm and beauty to any but a farmer, to whose eyes nothing can be so beautiful as a ripening field of good corn when prices are likely to rule high, or a healthy field of swedes when he has much stock to feed.
here a road runs parallel with the coast, under the lee of the impending sand hills, so that if you would catch the merest glimpse of the sea, you must climb to the summits of them and look down.
brean church lies considerably below the level of these surrounding sand-towans, which menace it in a manner not a little alarming in the view of a stranger. but the sand here, at any rate, has done its worst, for although in places across the narrow road it stands higher than the church tower, it is largely held down at last by a sparse growth of coarse grass, and the very height and massiveness of these sandhills act, under the circumstances, as a shield against the clouds of 101other sand still blowing in during rough weather from the sea.
the church of st. bridget is a small blue-grey limestone building of the perpendicular period, of rough character, scarcely distinguishable from a little distance as a church, and remarkable only for having its dwarf tower finished off with a saddlebacked roof. it is, as a matter of fact, only the remaining portion of the tower, struck by lightning and thrown down in 1729. an inscription on it, “john ginckens, churchwarden, a?o dom. 1729,” no doubt records the repairs effected on that occasion. “ginckens” appears to have been the best local attempt possible at spelling “jenkins.”
although it is sand that now more nearly threatens brean, the peculiar dangers of the place formerly arose from water. the ancient banks, supposed by some to be roman, that kept the low-lying country from being flooded by the sea were burst in 1607, and a great stretch of land, roughly twenty miles by five, was submerged for a long time to a depth of from ten to twelve feet. a pamphlet published at the time says:
“the parish of breane is swallowed (for the most part) up by the waters. in it stood but nine houses, and of those seaven were consumed, and with them xxvi persons lost their lives.”
local farmers are busily employed in the making of what is known as “caerphilly cheese”; sent across channel to cardiff and sold there as a 102welsh product to the south wales mining population.
berrow.
blown sand, “allus a-shiften and a-blowen,” is the most prominent feature of the way from this point, all the four miles into burnham. the ragwort—“the yallers,” as the countryfolk hereabouts know it—distributes a rich colour by the wayside, and confers upon what would otherwise be a somewhat dreary waste a specious cheerfulness. but even this hardy wilding, content with the minimum of nutriment, grows scarce and disappears as berrow comes in sight; berrow, where the sand-hummocks broaden out and entirely surround the church that stands there in its walled churchyard with a solitary cottage for neighbour—as though defensively laagered against attack in an enemy’s country; as indeed it is; the enemy, these insidious sands. berrow, there can be no doubt whatever, was one of the many islets that anciently were scattered about sedgemere, and we have but to glance inland 103between brean and berrow for this aforetime character of the surrounding country to be abundantly manifest, and for the eye to be immediately fixed with one of the most outstanding features of old time; the hill of brent knoll.
travellers to or from the west by the great western railway are generally much impressed, between yatton and bridgwater, by the strange solitary hill of brent knoll that rises abruptly from the plain of burnham level, and looks oddly like some long-extinct volcano with its cone shorn off or fallen in. fast trains do not stop at the little wayside station also called “brent knoll,” and while passengers are still gazing curiously at the hill, they are whirled away in midst of other interesting scenery.
brent knoll stands out prominently by virtue of its height of 457 feet, as well as by its isolated situation in the great alluvial plain through which lazily meander the muddy streams of brue and axe to their outlets at uphill and highbridge. it is one of those many scattered heights that are so strangely disposed about the neighbourhood of sedgemoor, and give so romantic an appearance to these wide-spreading levels. of these the most prominent, geographically and historically, is the famed glastonbury tor, which with its volcanic outline, crested with the tall tower of the ancient chapel of st. michael, is prominent for many a misty mile, like some hill of dream. then there is the mump at boroughbridge, by the crossing of the parret 104into the isle of athelney; borough hill, near wedmore; and many smaller, together with those scarcely perceptible hillocks amid the marshes that are now the sites of villages, whose very names of chedzoy, middlezoy, westonzoyland, and othery, tell us that these, together with the larger hills, were all, “once upon a time,” islands in a shallow sea that stagnated over the whole of what is now called “sedgemoor,” but is properly “sedgemere.” centuries of draining, of cutting those long, broad and deep dykes called “rhines,” that cross the moor for many miles, in every direction, and so carry away the waters, have converted what had become, after the sea had retired, an almost impassable morass into a fertile plain. the industry of peat-digging in the heart of the moor shows the nature of the soil in these parts, and modern discoveries of prehistoric lake-dwellings at meare, whose very name contains evidence of the mere, or lake that once existed, indicate the manner of life these ancient inhabitants lived. king arthur seems a dim and distant figure to us, but long before his time there lived a race of people on the islands of this inland sea; folk who, although they frescoed themselves liberally with red ochre, were by no means without a more artistic knowledge of decoration than implied by that crude form of personal adornment. they certainly made earthenware pottery of graceful forms, decorated with ornament of excellent design and execution. their other habits were primitive. largely a 105fish-eating folk, they often lived, as described earlier in these pages, in wattled huts built on piles or stakes driven in the waters. these forms of dwellings were readily adapted for defence, for shelter for their boats, and for fishing.
in those far-distant days brent knoll was an island. william of malmesbury, whose chronicle of the english kings was written early in the twelfth century, and abounds in marvels and prodigies, tells us that it was originally named “insula ranarum,” the isle of frogs. it had been, moreover, he says, in times even then far remote, the home of three most famous wicked giants, who were put to the sword, after a long and evil existence, by one ider, in the marvellous times of king arthur.
excellent roads completely encircle brent knoll, making the circuit around the base of it in some four miles, and a very pleasant and picturesque miniature circular trip it is on a bicycle beneath the great hill, which is thus seen to be as it were, roughly, one hill superimposed upon another, with a remarkably distinct ledge or broad shelf running around it, at half its total height; more noticeable from the north-west, perhaps, than from any other direction. the great bulk of brent knoll forming this base is composed of has rock; the upper part being of oolite. on the summit is an ancient earthwork, the centre of it marked by a flagstaff. no hilltop would be complete without its ancient fortified camp, but the story of that upon brent knoll has never 106been told, nor is now ever likely to be. roman coins, found in almost every old fortified post, have been found here also, and down below, in the meadows, the name of “battleborough” remains, with a tradition of alfred the great having here fought with and defeated the danes, or been defeated by them; which, in its vagueness, shows how extremely little is known of old times here. but the name “brent”—i.e. “burnt”—knoll is of itself evidence of warlike times, when the hilltop flared with beacon-fires.
there are two villages on brent knoll; south and east brent, both pleasant places; the first with a noble perpendicular church and stately tower; the second with a church less noble, provided with a tall spire that was formerly used as a landmark for ships making burnham, and was kept conspicuously whitewashed, that the mark might not be overlooked. since the tall lighthouses of burnham have arisen, the spire of east brent is no longer regularly made white.
brent knoll.
in the south brent church a fine series of carved bench-ends includes satirical representations of the story of reynard the fox, here especially applied to the grasping conduct of the mitred abbots of glastonbury, who sought to seize the temporalities and emoluments of south brent, but were defeated at law. thus we find here a fox, habited as an abbot, preaching to a flock of geese and other fowls; the fleece of a sheep hanging from his crozier sufficiently showing that his wardenship of flocks does not go 109unrewarded. three of his monks, shown as cowled swine, peer up at him. a lower panel on the same bench-end discloses a pig being roasted on a spit, which is turned at one end by a monkey and the fire blown with a bellows by another monkey at the opposite end.
on another bench-end of this series we see that the geese have revolted against the fox, who is found sitting upright in a penitential attitude, his hind legs in fetters. a monkey preaches to, or admonishes, the geese, in his stead. in the lower panel the fox is seen in the stocks, a monkey mounting guard with a halberd.
brent knoll.
an elaborate mural monument to one “john somersett,” 1663, and his two wives, occupies great space on the south side of the nave; john somerset himself represented in half-length, with a portrait-bust of a wife on either side. there are, further, effigies of himself and the two mrs. somerset praying, accompanied by a chrisom child; together with an alarming effigy starting 110up in a coffin and praying earnestly to an angel who, armed with a trumpet like a megaphone, wallows amid clouds, blowing reassuring messages, which issue from the trumpet visibly in lengths, not unlike the news from modern tape-machines. an elderly angel, with an oily smile of smug satisfaction, beams greasily below. the whole curious composition has been recently very highly coloured, in reproduction of the original scheme.
